"Voters who watch a lot of television but don't really know much about the candidates besides how they look are particularly susceptible," Chappell Lawson, coauthor of the study, told MIT News. "The size of the effect is roughly equivalent to the influence of incumbency."

MIT associate professors Lawson and Gabriel Lenz evaluated data from the 2006 U.S. Senate and governor's races. They found that for every 10-point increase in the advantage a candidate had when rated by voters on his or her looks, there was a 5 percent increase in support for that candidate from uninformed voters who said they watch a lot of television.

Uninformed voters who said they watch little TV only supported the candidate by an additional 1 percent.”